Breakfast with Bwana

Breakfast with Bwana

JANUARY 11, 2005

SQUATTER'S RIGHTS:

Readers will recall my comment on the appointment of Gen. Gary E. Luck ("Luck-E" to us, if not for us) to review the situation in Iraq and submit a "confidential" report to Secretary Rumsfeld. Some of you may recall my suggestion that, notwithstanding bureaucratic palaver, the conclusions he should draw, sans blinders, are pretty obvious and foreshadowed by reality. I am not necessarily suggesting that I expect reality to trump the desire of the polyhedron of defense in terms of final conclusions.

It is not bad enough that the Ship of State seems to be running aground on multiple policy fronts. Here, I leave it to the reader, whatever your view is of the rectitude or foolhardiness of our policy, to fill in the blanks as to what ails the system. _____ _____ _____ ______. There you go. I trust that four blanks to fill in, will satisfy all of your childish urges.

But, what merits attention today, is a report of a different sort of grounding.

A United States nuclear submarine, the San Francisco, ran aground Saturday 350 miles south of Guam, in the Pacific Ocean, injuring about 20 crew members, one of them critically, the Navy said.

There was no damage to the reactor that powers the submarine and the ship's hull was intact, said Petty Officer Alyssa Batarla, a Navy spokeswoman.

The cause is under investigation.

Now, I rush to say that if one is of Bwanaian disposition, one is likely to say that the investigation is not necessary. The cause may quite easily be determined as:

i. the ocean bed was higher than the Captain (or his designee in charge at the moment) thought, or

ii. the water was not as deep as the above-mentioned person(s) thought, or

iii. they weren't where they thought they were, or

iv. Vladimir Putin put Dioxin in the Captain's soup.

Well, things are really not quite that simple when it comes to major investigations and major catastrophes. In other words, there is no such thing as Luck-E when it comes to cutting to the chase on these matters.

I want to digress here for a moment to say that the reason this particular incident is considered "major" is because we are dealing with a "new-killer" sub. For those of you who do not understand a Texas drawl from Midland, "new-killer" in normal English is "nuclear." I mean, if we were dealing with a mere container ship with unscreened cargo carrying shipments of contraband for possible use by terrorists, we wouldn't be nearly as upset. But, if it is a "new-killer" sub, wow, we better get antsy.

On another note of digression, you know this intuitively because even as we speak of the horror of the Tsunami, we measure its seriousness by the number killed, not by the number of living who are disaffected. That number is perhaps a hundred times the death toll. And, we measure our response, not by the compassion we show, but by the total dollars. But, that's for another day.

We have had other groundings. The Exxon Valdez is perhaps the most notorious because of the sheer magnitude of the damage it caused to Pristine William Sound. (Okay, okay, I know it is "Prince" William Sound, but Pristine Sounds better.)

Then, of course, there was the QE2, that magnificent oceanliner owned by Cunard which ran aground off the coast of Massachusetts. Here is what was determined about that particular lack of depth:

In August 1992, the QE2 had her taste of bad luck as well. While cruising in the Vineyard Sound off the coast of Massachusetts she ran aground, and damaged large parts of her keel and bow. . . . How could the QE2 have run aground in waters known to be deep enough for her? The answer came after serious investigation. The conclusion had been drawn and it was the so-called 'squat-effect' that was to blame. This phenomenon is created when larger vessels travel through water at higher speed. The shape and speed of the ship pushes the surrounding water away, literally digging a hole in the water for the ship. What was discovered during the investigation was that this effect was greatly increased while travelling at higher speeds, which the QE2 was doing at the moment of the grounding. The amount of water pushed away was simply larger than expected, and thereby the ship also had a lesser depth of water to sail in."

Well, as a lawyer, I have heard my fair share of BS whether from witnesses, experts, adversaries, colleagues, yea, even judges. I have not actually heard of someone delivering it while in "squat-effect."

But, there you are.

Now, you know why the cause of the grounding of the "new-killer" sub is likely to be more complicated than appears at first blush. You see, the rational mind that says the water was not deep enough, is treading in dangerous waters. We must let the experts squat and look the situation over, so they can tell us.

So, General Luck-E is going to tell us why things are not going well in Iraq. Maybe he'll conclude that there is a multi-sect "squat effect" going on. Iyad Allawi is trying to squat in the Presidential office. The Sunnis want to squat in front of the polling places and shoot anyone who tries to vote. Ayatollah Sistani wants to squat until power is delivered to him by the sheer weight of the Shiite majority. The Kurds have been squatting for centuries. They are accustomed to it.

And, our leadership doesn't seem to know squat.

Cheerz....Bwana